


And Her Eyes Like Orange Flames

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: The Ritual (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Female, Bad Dreams, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Horror, Probably not for those who are squicked by pregnancy, References to breastfeeding, Wallowing in the canon’s atmosphere, references to pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-12-02 00:36:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20951483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: If Lisa was in the mood to lie to herself, she might be able to believe it was still just Hutch: Hutch who never stopped bumming fags off her even after she gave up, the same Hutch who swore blind she’d never let motherhood change her, even though it did, of course it did, no matter how much she tried to hide it.





	And Her Eyes Like Orange Flames

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivine/gifts).

> I’m taking a bit of a risk here considering how many people have a pregnancy squick, but the idea of the group as all-female struck me as fascinating and gave me *ideas*. The direct references are brief but played for horror, so yeah, definitely not for those with a pregnancy squick.

It’s here.

Huddled in the tent, Lisa can hear its barking roar, the crack of something big crashing through the trees. Last night’s raindrops drum on the taut nylon, dislodged from the canopy above.

She doesn’t remember the rain. Doesn’t remember how it came to be that she is here, when she went to sleep in her own bed in a shithole flat in Kentish Town.

There’s no mystery to it, though. Not when she still wakes from time to time to find her cramped box room filled with the scent of pine trees and wet earth, the walls papered with the feathered shadows of branches, the carpet damp underfoot, thick and spongy as moss.

From outside she hears a barking croupy cough. It might just possibly have come from a human chest. She’s pretty sure it didn’t.

Then: “Lise?”

_ Oh fuck. Oh fuck no. _

A looming shadow passes over the side of the tent, accompanied by another uneven drumroll of falling rain.

“I’m scared, Lise. I woke up and I didn’t know where the fuck I was.“ A shaky laugh. Self-mocking bitterness. Hutch’s voice is strained, weak and trembling, with a hollow note of fear that forces Lisa to speak, even though she doesn’t want to, even though she is curling her hands into fists on the sleeping bag and clenching her jaw to stop the words from emerging.

“Hutch?”

She regrets it immediately, clamps her hand over her mouth, bites down hard on the knuckle of her thumb. Outside there is a moment of silence, aching stillness, an instant of freefall.

Then a sob. Desperate relief. It sounds so real, and she thinks,  _ Maybe it is real. _

“Lise? Oh, thank fuck. I didn’t know where you’d all gone. Are the others…”

“I’m here,” she says, and because it’s too late to do anything else now she kicks her way free of the sleeping bag and rises to a crouch. Easier to run, although it’s not like there’s anywhere to run to. “The others are…” She’s not sure what to say. If this is real then maybe the others are okay, too, still in their tents waiting for their chance to bitch and piss and moan again, like nothing ever happened, like nothing ever changed. And never mind that if that were true then Hutch wouldn’t be outside the tent sounding lost and terrified, and never mind the pain in Lisa’s chest either, those stinging needles of agony from a wound that never quite heals up completely, but reopens itself again and again.

Footsteps outside. Something stumbling closer.

_ You were dead, _ she thinks.  _ I saw inside you. _

She –  _ it  _ – is right outside the tent now. “You decent?”

Lisa closes her eyes, shuddering. She flinches at the sound of the zip as it’s drawn down, slow, deliberate, opening up a gash of darkness that grows and spreads as the tent flap is pulled open.

She sees the outline of Hutch’s naked legs, streaked with dirt. The triangle of pubic hair matted with dried blood.

With the same slow deliberate care as the opening of the zip, Hutch begins to bend down. She’s shivering, her teeth chattering, but not from cold: there is a hunger to that sound, and excitement in her breathing. Each exhalation sounds like the snort of an animal, carries the reek of musk. Lisa is expecting gore, to see the ruined flesh where Hutch was disembowelled, but instead there’s just her belly, the skin crinkled and underscored by the dark livid scar from a C section. Her breasts are misshapen, changed by pregnancy and breastfeeding

_ Mother _ .

It feels like a cold fist has risen out of the earth and closed around Lisa, trying to drag her down. The damp earth seeps up through the ground sheet, the wet smell of the forest after the rain so thick she is drawing it inside herself with each ragged breath.

Hutch stoops and her hands close around the edges of the entrance to the tent. Her head is down, so Lisa can’t see her face.

_ Mother mother mother.  _ It repeats in her head like a siren: it’s all she can think, over and over again.

As Hutch ducks inside the tent, she looks up. Her face is lost in folds of shadow, but her eyes are gleaming, reflecting the strange light like a fox’s might when caught in headlights. They shine orange, burn like fire. 

Lisa almost wants to laugh, but she knows that once she starts she won’t be able to stop, and all she can think, the only thoughts with any coherence in the whirling chaos of her mind, is that single word  _ mother _ , and the Swedish woman, that weirdo with her shining adoring eyes telling her that she will kneel.

There’s something off about Hutch’s body. Beneath the grey skin of her back, the knobs of her spine are too pronounced, the shadows they cast too long; they claw across her back like talons. The proportions of her body are wrong too: she’s dropped on all fours yet seems to tower over Lisa. Her body fills the tent, crowding out all else out except the reek of sweat and soured milk and animal musk, and even so, if Lisa was in the mood to lie to herself, she might be able to believe it’s still just Hutch: Hutch who never stopped bumming fags off her even after she gave up, Hutch who always tried to steer the conversation away from baby-led weaning and third degree tears, Hutch who swore fucking blind she’d never let motherhood change her, even though it did, of course it did, no matter how much she tried to hide it.

But it’s not Hutch at all. She’s gone, they’re all gone, and while Lisa might have escaped the forest – even awake, there are times when she’s not sure that’s actually true – that doesn’t mean she’s escaped the god-thing. It’s coming for her, reaching out across land and water, back to a place it still remembers. England, multi-fucking-cultural from its very beginnings, Celtic gods and Norse gods and who knows what else leaving their spore upon the land. It knew that place once; it remembers. And even if it doesn’t, maybe there’s a chance she took a little part of it away with her, carried it with her when she fled.

She hears the scratch of nails on nylon, sees tears appearing in the fabric overhead. Through the gashes, the moon, the colour of curdled milk, fringed with the shadows of the trees.

An impression of antlers outspread. Of something rearing.

But it’s just Hutch, rising to her feet. Spreading out her arms.

A snorting exhalation, and Lisa is enveloped in a cloud of stinking breath. The crushing weight of the fury of something old and ancient bearing down upon her, Hutch’s eyes burning like orange flames.

“Mother,” Lisa whispers, and  _ kneel,  _ it sings, and there’s nothing Lisa can do. All her hope is gone. Strangely, all her fear too.

Trembling, she drops to her knees.


End file.
